[In pencil]
Ben Marston Watson (p363 of the Letters)  Feby 5

My dear Mr Sanborn

I am very much
obliged to you for the
advanced sheets.  Those
times were the most
interesting to me, and
every word that relates
to them seems so vital
to me!  Then were laid
the foundations of modern
New England.  I was
just buying Hillside
and planning the
new life.  are the minor
accidents in the Emerson-





Thoreau life are very
important because they
bring out the human &
family side of their lives
which to some people
it never seem they lacked.
It seems funny to be
building once more Mrs
Brown's house. Every in-
cident in its early
life being so familiar to
Mrs Watson & myself.
Mrs B was a great spur
to Thoreau - the building
of her house  Mr Emerson's
chief friend.  You
should have seen him
when he first came from
Europe, reading in the





Lyceum his lectures
on Italy like a good
boy, religion and philosophy
being taboed. [sic]
The poor man hardly
knew what to preach
about for a while, but
preach he must. He
never failed to read
everything he wrote in
Plymouth from the first,
especially after he began
to feel the attraction
of Venus. Fortunately for
us he had several very
strong friends in P. from the
earliest period.  I heard
everything.  I was 12 yrs old
when he first appeared
above the horizon.  The first





time I remember him in my fathers
house was in 1832 when Wm. Goodwin
was a baby - he knew what a
beautiful voice that boy had.

You might trust our father's
intermaxillary bone -I think he
was more proud of that than of anything
else -and he was always as
you say, more proud of his science than
of his poetry.  He had the prophetic mind -
and also the story of the Siege of Paris.
Yours, Ben Marston